A little about me…

I photograph the way that I love: emotionally, honestly, deeply, intuitively.

And I photograph people the way I do because I can see in them what others have seen in me: that they deserve love. They deserve to be valued. They are beautiful. They deserve everything they can imagine their lives to be.

I absolutely see this in people as I photograph them. I attempt to create images that reflect the most perfect image you can possibly imagine of yourself. This is what I strive to create each and every time I press the shutter.

And, each and every time I shake a hand...each and every time I look into someone's eyes...I strive to remind them they deserve love and they are loved.

Please take a moment to look around my blog and get to know me! And, I hope to have the opportunity to get to know you! I look forward to connecting with you!

Friday, December 14, 2012

O Tannenbaum!

When it comes to Christmas trees, well, bigger is always better in my book. As an Oregonian it was practically a rite of passage to go hunt for Christmas trees out in the wild (20 minutes east of Portland). My parents and I would head to our favorite tree farm and wander the entire 5 acre plot searching for just the perfect one (usually a Douglas Fir). Perfect meant: symmetrical, very round at the bottom and tapering perfectly to one nice point, for the star (or, for a few years there, an angel)…and of course, it had to be…HAD to be as tall as possible. This usually leads to the “your eyes are bigger than your stomach” comment from my mom…meaning, “Seriously? That tree would be a candidate for the position outside of Rockafeller Center!” But a few years there, my parents got caught up in the excitement and may have had to cut off a good 10 inches from the trunk to get it to barely fit (the star would sort of be smashed onto the stem, sitting cockeyed, digging into the ceiling.

This year, we moved into a house with 8.5 foot ceilings and the urge to go big came rushing back! So, the day after Thanksgiving, James, his mom, and I piled into the car and headed out to the best tree farm around, called Hog Hollow. They didn’t have any Doug Fir, but they had LOTS of tall, bushy trees, so I was in hog heaven!

(please excuse the iPhone photos!)

We decorated with a bunch of old decorations, including all of the ornaments from every year of my life (depicting aspects of that year…like, the cabbage patch doll for my 5th year of life, and the very accurate rendering of James and I on our wedding day in 2006!) And good news: the dogs have only destroyed one precious childhood ornament!